How the Irish Saved Civilization: The
Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise
of Medieval Europe. by Thomas Cahill Doubleday, New York,272
pages, $16.95

You've got to love the Irish. God knows, I'm biased. My father's parents
were both Irish. In fact, my grandmother achieved no small amount of fame
in West Vancouver some seventy years ago by getting Mrs. Fingall-Smith,
the president of the Women's Christian Temperance Society, totally snackered
on home-made "tonic"--a concoction of dandelion wine fortified
with a generous dose of whiskey. This, of course, is all part of the irrepressible
Irish spirit that Thomas Cahill celebrates in his rollicking history How
the Irish Saved Civilization.

Cahill's effortless prose captures a particularly Irish blend of mysticism
and bravado, mixed with a profound love of both storytelling and the pleasures
of life here on earth. He argues that it was quite possibly this very
mix that fuelled the success of the Irish missionary efforts at the dawn
of the Dark Ages. While the Roman empire was beginning to contract and
then disintegrate, hundreds of Irish scribes in remote hermitages were
hunkered down copying out the texts of antiquity (great tales, I tell
you!). Were it not for their zeal, we might well be bereft of much of
classical Latin literature as well as the early vernacular literatures
of Europe.

This whole movement to snatch civilization back from the brink started
with an unlikely saviour, a poorly schooled man called Patricius (St.
Patrick to many of us), who served for seven years as a shepherd slave
in Ireland, converted to Christianity, escaped to England, and then returned
as a priest to convert the rest of Ireland. Curiously, missionary work
hadn't been a hot item for Christians in the first five centuries of our
millennium. Until Patrick came along, there hadn't been any since Paul
of Corinth in the first century. As Cahill notes, Patrick's radical decision
to become a missionary was "as bold as Columbus, and a thousand times
more humane".

Patrick's Irish-based Christianity was a far cry from the Roman-based
Christianity of Bishop Augustine. While Augustine described women's embraces
as "sordid, filthy and horrible", Patrick quite delighted in
writing about "a blessed woman, Irish by birth, noble, extraordinarily
beautiful--a true adult--whom I baptised." For Patrick, it was the
love of God, love of Creation, and fearlessness in faith that counted
most.

It is fortunate for us that two notable men, Columbanus and Columcille,
appeared in the latter part of the fifth century. Since Patrick had already
won over enough of Ireland to maintain the faith, these two men set their
sights on establishing monastery footholds in Scotland, England, France,
Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Italy, and even Russia. The texts both copied
and created by the scribes trained under these two men were subsequently
popcorned all over Europe and numbered in the thousands.

Cahill is splendid at capturing the twists that wind the springs propelling
our history into entirely new realities. For example, it was Columcille--a
person of whom I had never even heard before--who was a key element in
the rebirth of literacy during the Dark Ages. It started when he was charged
by Bishop Finian for the crime of copying a psalter that the bishop regarded
as his alone. It was probably the first case ever fought over literary
copyright. At its conclusion, King Diarmait pronounced, "To every
cow her calf, to every book its copy"--meaning that the offspring
of the bishop's property reverted to him. The humiliation of this loss
chewed away at Columcille. Later, when the King killed one of Columcille's
followers, he used the event to avenge himself, waged war, and left three
thousand and one dead and "only one of them on the princely Columcille's
side". Now Columcille had a dilemma. As a man of Christian faith,
he was duty-bound to "save as many souls as perished in the battle
he precipitated". Hence his almost manic creation of new monasteries,
his commitment to copying old texts, and his consequent rebuilding of
literacy.

The tale is timely. Cahill's sketch of Rome's demise, in some measure
as a result of its inequitable taxation systems, the disappearance of
its middle class, and the growth of greed, has resonance in the events
of our time. "'Tis how it is," my Irish grandmother would sum
up. "A people what is after getting too big for their boots, be time
they'll be walking without them."